Beatles Rock Band: Favorite vs. Greatest

I'm going to say it out loud: I think The Beatles is the greatest rock band in the history of music. They had a great sound, original ideas in their later years, and hands down helped truly revolutionize rock and roll. Because of this, I know that "Rock Band: The Beatles" will be my favorite music game to come. The fact that their adding harmonizing (which is something I wanted since the release of the first game), along with other features only increases my desire to own this game. Now, this being said, I want to explain why this, despite most likely being my favorite game, will not be the best of the Rock Band games.

One Band = Little Diversity

I have no problem doing nothing but listening to the Beatles all night long. I could survive on these guys alone because of their huge music catalog. However, not all people are like that. Some people want to play a different group, and with this game, it's going to be impossible. Even Guitar Hero: Aerosmith and Metallica (and most likely Van Halen) had "guest acts," which were songs from other groups. Granted, AC/DC was a one group only disc as well, but these could be transfered over to the other Rock Band games as well. Rock Band: Beatles WON'T do this, which leads me to the next problem:

No Transfering

Rock Band: Beatles is a stand alone game. This leads to a problem of moving getting more tracks. The good news is that you can still buy DLC for the game. The bad news is that, like Guitar Hero: Metallica, you can only buy DLC that is related to the band. Even more bad news: the music can't be transferred to Rock Band or Rock Band 2, nor can music from RB and RB2 be transferred to RB Beatles (but of course, that's to be expected). One would think that they would just do what they did with the first Rock Band and allow it to be transferred to Rock Band 2 for a nominal fee. That isn't going to happen. I would prefer having one huge library that I can easily browse through instead of having to switch between discs and limitting what I can play.

Less Creativity, Less Freedom

This is a rather small gripe. I'm playing this for The Beatles, so I could care less about this. For others, however, one of the more "fun" and well-liked features in this game was the ability to create characters and instruments. Since you're playing the Beatles, you're playing what you handed. This means that you can't create anything, and the venues will be less liberal (if it will be at all) in the various venues. Like I said, though, I'm playing this for the Beatles and their history, so I'm good either way in this aspect.

Now, since this is my reasoning of the idea, this doesn't mean this will be the case. Plenty of this looked good and completely sucked. Other things looked like they'd be hampered by problems by in reality they worked out just fine. To further make a point, I'm still looking forward to this game despite these problems because I know the overall experience will be greater than the faults. I wouldn't be surprised if I had more fun with this than the other games, despite the setlist I've acquired over time.